WHAT WE DO AND CHRISTMAS IN ARGENTINA

What We Do

We have previously written that we are part of a district of 9 senior couples and 2 senior sisters. The district is composed of the senior couples from the Area Office. There are 2 doctors and their wives, the Nielsons and the Ashtons, an area auditor and his wife, the Williams, a mental health specialist and her companion Sister Redd and Sister Hancock, a couple who work in public affairs, the Wieses, a couple who digitize government records for family history work, the Licursis, a couple who travel throughout the area training mission and stake leaders in the “Open Chapel” missionary initiative (using chapels as temporary visitor centers) and who were recently asked to help temporarily with stake treks throughout the area, the Nortons, the assistant executive secretary to the area presidency and his wife, the Smiths, and us, the Loves, who have been called as Associate Area Legal Counsel and administrative assistant for the Office of General Counsel in the area. It is a diverse group of wonderful, dedicated, seasoned missionaries who perform important work.

Our day to day work is at an office about 2 miles from our apartment. We walk about three-fourths of a mile to the subway each morning around 8:30, ride three stops, then walk about half of a mile to our office on Avenida Virrey del Pino, where we arrive just before 9:00. The doctors, the mental health missionaries, and the public affairs couple also work at our location. The other senior couples work at other locations in downtown Buenos Aires, about 7 miles from our office. Each week begins with an area-wide devotional that is broadcast by internet to all employees in the area and the area offices in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay take turns presenting the program by live video. It is a neat experience to begin the work week with a hymn and a prayer and a spiritual thought. Around 1:00 we break for lunch and the senior missionaries normally eat together. It is a great time to enjoy each other’s company and catch up on what’s going on. We have truly come to love and appreciate these great people we are blessed to work with. We generally finish up at the office around 5:00 and head back to our apartment on the subway, where we change into casual clothes and relax, do laundry, run errands, shop, etc. Saturday is our p-day.

The work is varied and runs the gamut from ensuring that the Church is properly represented by competent local attorneys in lawsuits or other matters involving any of the Church’s entities in the 4 countries in the area, to arranging for proper handling of property damage claims for car accidents or missionary apartment incidents, etc., to keeping track of all of the legal requirements the Church must comply with in each of the countries in the area, to arranging for proper legal advice in employment matters (the Church has several hundred employees in the area), to ensuring that the documentation necessary for more than a hundred Church managers to act for the Church is up to date and properly executed, to advising Church leaders concerning a variety of sensitive matters and projects. The Church has outstanding outside attorneys and has developed some excellent technology to help us with all of this, and Sister Love has become quite an expert at running reports every day to help the legal staff know what matters are due or need updating and to otherwise focus their efforts. Although the work is not physically demanding, we generally arrive home at the end of the day ready for a rest, but we truly feel like we are helping and making a difference.

In addition, although we all live within just a few blocks of each other in the geographic area of the Palermo Ward, Congreso Stake, each senior couple has been assigned to attend a different ward in either the Congreso Stake or the Belgrano Stake, in order to spread all that experience as broadly as possible. Each couple has a calling in their assigned ward in addition to their full-time missionary assignment. One of the couples teaches the young single adults, another teaches institute classes, one of the sisters is a veil worker at the Buenos Aires Temple every Tuesday, others teach Sunday School, etc. We attend the Villa Crespo Ward in the Belgrano Stake, which has not had senior missionary couples for a long time. Bishop Cascallares has asked us to look after a sister in the ward who is going through some difficult times, so we are trying to make contact with her.

General Authorities Come to Our Family Home Evening

We work in the same office as the Area Presidency, Elder Tiexiera, Elder Packer and Elder Bragg, all of whom are general authority seventies. A couple of weeks ago, they asked if they could attend the weekly family home evening all of the senior missionaries attend. Responsibility for lessons and activities are rotated among the couples and it was our turn to do an activity. The presidency wanted to tell us about an update to the mission personal travel policy and then share a special Christmas message with us. It was fun to have 3 general authority seventies as guests and to enjoy their spirit and their love for us.  Because they work all week and then travel most weekends to stake conferences around the area, as well, they get Mondays off, so we thought it was pretty cool they would come on their p-day to visit us.

Area Presidency - Elder Packer, Elder Tiexiera, and Elder Bragg attend our family home evening.

Getting Ready for Christmas

In the days leading up to Christmas we had a chance to participate in the ward Christmas party on December 16. The ward provided shredded chicken and rolls and the members were asked to bring salads. Sister Love whipped up a great tuna macaroni salad for us to bring. The announcement was that we should arrive at 7:30 and dinner would begin at 8:00. So, we arrived at 7:30 and we got to help set up. 8:00 came and went and hardly anyone else was there. Everyone started arriving at around 8:30 and dinner was served at 9:15. The food was great and the attendance was very good. We had a nice time but we had to leave just as the party was getting started around 10:00. We had practiced with the choir to sing a special musical number and the youth were going to put on a program but all of that apparently came later, probably around 11:00. This is how it’s done in Argentina. We just get used to it.

Villa Crespo Ward Chapel

Villa Crespo Ward Christmas Party

We also had a chance to celebrate Christmas at the office. The Area Presidency held a nice devotional for all of the employees and senior missionaries on December 15. It was broadcast to all of the other area headquarters, as well. Each of the members of the Area Presidency and their wives spoke and then we had a nice lunch. Each employee and senior couple received a triple combination as a gift from the Area Presidency. The employees got the rest of the day off but we went back to work. Then, on our last day of work before Christmas, there was a traditional Christmas toast with all of the employees in our office. We truly work with some special people.

Exec. Sec. to the Area Presidency, Elder Walker, Legal Assistant, Julia Villasboa, and Sister Walker

Sec. to the Dir. of Temporal Affairs, Gabriela Orleanski, and her daughters

The table ready for Christmas toasts.

Sister Love's office Christmas decorations

We were off the Friday before Christmas and we took the opportunity to go to the Buenos Aires Temple with all but one of the other senior missionary couples. We visited the gift shop and ran into the president of the Buenos Aires MTC, Pres. Benton, and his wife. The MTC is located by the temple. They are a neat couple and they had even prepared some gifts for each of us, which was a really special surprise. We rode to and from the temple with Elder and Sister Norton, and after the session, they asked us if we had ever been to Kansas, a local restaurant that is popular with Americans. We hadn’t, so they invited us and treated us to a late lunch as their Christmas present to us. The food was wonderful and we really enjoyed their company.

Buenos Aires Temple

Us at the Buenos Aires Temple

 

Christmas flowers at the Buenos Aires Temple

A special treat at Kansas Restaurant

Christmas

A few Christmas decorations around Buenos Aires.

Christmas Eve we went to the shopping district of Buenos Aires along Avenida Florida, where we shopped for souvenirs and we stopped and had KFC at the beautiful Galerias Pacifico Mall before heading back home to get ready for Christmas Day. We enjoyed just having a couple of hours together to explore and enjoy the shops.

Galerias Pacifico in Buenos Aires - beautiful hand painted art work on the ceilinngs

Our Christmas started at midnight, when we heard from the apartments in the buildings that surround us a countdown, similar to New Years eve. Precisely at midnight, there was a joyous shout and, we're sure, toasts, and lots of fire crackers throughout the city. 

Christmas day was rainy but we enjoyed a lovely sacrament meeting combined with the Chacarito Ward, which also meets in our building, but attendance was down because of the rain. The messages were very good and to close the meeting, we had been practicing for several weeks with the combined ward choirs to sing a special Christmas medley of songs arranged by the Villa Crespo Ward choir director and the Chacarito Ward pianist. It is a wonderful arrangement and she was so appreciative of having someone participate on a regular basis. There were some practices when Elder Love was the only man there. We got used to 2 and 3 hour practices that consistently started about a half-hour late but, in the end, the choir came together, and we thought it sounded pretty good.

The women's section of the Villa Villa Crespo/Chacarito Wards combined choir with our director, in red, on the back row

After sacrament meeting, we walked in the rain with the young missionary sisters to the bus stop to make our way to our apartment for dinner. The Villa Crespo Ward takes good care of the young missionaries who are assigned there. For example, most of the other couples have the young full-time missionaries in for dinner virtually every Sunday, but our ward has been without senior couples for a long time, so they are well organized to feed the missionaries. We had to fight to get a turn to do that, even on Christmas day. We truly enjoyed having Sister Collado and Sister Singleton here. Sister Collado is from Malaga, Spain, and Sister Singleton is from Salt Lake City, Utah. Sister Love cooked a ham in our Chinese crock pot, and made some sour cream potatoes and other great fixin’s. Then, after we ate, Sister Collado Skyped with her family (Sister Singleton’s family was traveling to Disney World, so she had already Skyped with them the day before). Sister Love also prepared small Christmas stockings for the sisters and we had a couple of small gifts for them under the tree, so we all opened presents together. We had a lovely day before the sisters had to leave for an appointment, after which we Skyped with most of our family.

Dinner with Sisters Collado and Singleton

Skyping with the fam

Sister Love made a gingerbread house

Sister Love's Light the World advent calendar

While we were having a really different Christmas than perhaps we thought we would a few months ago, it was really special and an experience we wouldn’t trade. We hope all of you also had a wonderful, peaceful Christmas and that you will have a happy, prosperous New Year.

Until next time, when we will tell you about our trip to the Pampas and the Gaucho capital of Argentina.